


The Zealot and the Prophet

by theElement



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen, Season 1 and 2 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:34:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theElement/pseuds/theElement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His own revolution two years in the future, Kamui Kirito is an inexperienced small-time crook searching for direction in his quest for revenge. His search takes him to the sprawling underground crime industry, where he falls under the wing of a certain man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Birth of a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> _« Makishima is a “prophet” - an idealist who draws out and enables the desires of people. He also accomplishes things with sagacity. This makes him an “angel”. Kamui, on the other hand, is a “revolutionist”. He is all about revenge and accomplishing his goals. He doesn’t mind sacrificing others. This makes him a “demon”. »_
> 
>  
> 
> \- Tow Ubukata, Animage Magazine

The first thing he felt upon waking was a dull bodily pain. It was the kind of pain that lingered after the anesthetics had worn off, a vague memory left in the nerves reminding his mind of the trauma his body experienced during surgery.

But it felt different. His body felt different. He’d had surgeries before – torn ligaments from a soccer game, an inflamed appendix – neither of which elicited this strange incongruity he now felt in each joint, at every juncture of skin, between each muscle and its corresponding bone. He tried to think of reasons behind these sensations and realized his thoughts were jumbled and that for the moment, he had been consigned not to do or to think, but to feel.

The overwhelmingly prevailing feeling was that this body was foreign, like an ill fit. His eyeballs creaked as he lifted his lids, rolling uncomfortably in sockets they were clearly not designed for. With each minuscule muscle contraction he attempted in an effort to sit up, he discovered similar, intense aches, aggregating and springing up through his nerves until it felt as if entire sections of his torso were begging to be torn away from the puzzle slots they had been forced into. Amidst the mess of agony signals in his brain, the first coherent thought emerged.

_This body is not mine._

The second one was, _but why wouldn’t it be? Am I dead?_

“You’re awake,” he heard a voice say.

He could only assume that the voice belonged to his attending doctor, presumably the one who saved his life. He tried to muster an expression of gratitude, but his mandibles shifted awkwardly.

“Don’t speak. You should get some rest, Kirito-kun.”

He nodded, feeling the pangs in his neck vertebrae. Shifting back down into his cot, his eyes passed inadvertently over his right hand.

Almost immediately, he recognized it.

The memory flooded him, as grotesquely vivid as a dump of acid. Shimizu Maki had held his hand tight in both of hers, seconds before the plane ruptured at its seams upon impact and tore her limbs from her body. It was the last thing he remembered before he blacked out, and there was no mistaking the contour of that hand, the slightly shorter ring finger, the paleness of the skin…

It took his ears a few seconds to register his own scream.

 

* * *

He was not sure who his tear ducts used to belong to, and he doubted Masuzaki remembered either. He figured they might have been Maki’s, or perhaps Riku’s or Kyohei’s. All he knew was that whoever did own them probably did not use them very often, because the first time he cried, it felt as though his tears were irrigating freshly dug canals on their way out through the corners of his eyes. It felt oddly pleasurable, and almost excessively so. It dawned on him, the irony of enjoying an act rooted in unimaginable grief.

Even after Masuzaki’s lengthy explanation, Kamui still did not understand why the transplant researchers could not have run their experiment on someone else, using body parts of nameless corpses that man did not know or cherish. Even after accepting the doctor’s justification that the surgery would contribute to life-saving science, he failed to see why it was at all necessary to stitch together the brain matter of his classmates and implant into him memories of their last moments.

He stopped sleeping at night, preferring to close his eyes during the day, when street noises would drown out their dying words and the daylight would suppress the images of their mutilated bodies.

He cried often.

* * *

For the first seven years, he was immobile. Masuzaki’s sponsoring company, the Tougane Foundation, supplied Kamui with not only a residence, but also a helper drone that took care of him and equipped him with locomotive ability. Unsurprisingly, he could not return to school, but he was quickly put on a homeschool regimen led by a team of education drones also provided by the foundation. A bright and inquisitive boy fascinated by the world of knowledge his cybernetic professors bestowed upon him, Kamui never complained about this setup and was thankful that the Tougane Foundation was willing to do so much. He was a bit perplexed as to why his parents were not allowed to visit, but since he was never very close to them, the issue simply dropped from his mind after a while.

Kamui’s favorite subjects were computer science and holo-design. At first, when he read about and began to idolize a wheelchair-bound early-21st-century cosmologist named Stephen Hawking, he had wanted to pursue physics in Hawking’s honor. However, he eventually concluded that physics was too theoretical and abstract for his practical, hands-on taste. Kamui craved concrete pursuits he could sink his teeth into, and programming was a passion well-befitting of him. As he explored the many applications of computer science, holographic art drew him in: there was something about manifesting beautiful colors and images using bite-sized pieces of text, like he was a painter with a keyboard, that he found poetic – and Kamui wasn’t a particularly poetic young man. Being of the visual sort, he continued to prefer manga to books as he did in his early childhood, much to the dismay of his literature professor. Kamui would try to convince Fukuda-sensei every other week that the hundred-year old “Monster” was educational for its historical value, but would get shot down.

It turned out, too, that both programming and holo-design worked with his daily schedule: staying up long nights to code wasn’t a problem for him.

For those first seven years, keeping his Psycho-Pass clear was probably his biggest challenge. Periodically, a traumatic memory or a bout of existential hopelessness would visit him, and the change in hue would be picked up by his helper drone’s daily health-monitoring cymatic scan. When this happened, he would be administered medication, which was adequate but never completely effective, leaving him with minute deteriorations that were individually negligible but became significant as they piled up over time. While it was a constant source of stress to see a rise in hue (which was clearly not a beneficial cycle), Kamui thought the idea of the Psycho-Pass was poetic in itself, and frequently wondered about the basis of its programming. He thought it was beautiful that it represented sound minds with light, pastel colors and distressed minds with darker, glaring ones, and it gave him a sort of sick satisfaction seeing his own color grow more intense and vivid over the course of several months.

The very last time his Psycho-Pass was scanned, he was yellow-green, a vibrant, shocking color he was satisfied with. He would go on to use this as his default color, the color he assumed he never changed from, but the truth was that there came a day when he stopped knowing at all.

 

 


	2. The Ghost in His Shell

“Masuzaki-sensei?”

On the other end of the phone, the doctor’s voice sounded scratchy, like he’d just woken from a deep sleep. “Hello? Who is this?”

“It’s me, Kamui Kirito.”

“Kirito-kun…! It’s been so long. Have you been recovering well?”

“Yeah, I have. Listen, I might need your help. That helper bot you assigned me – I don’t think it’s working anymore.”

* * *

Now well enough to move about, Kamui assisted Masuzaki, as well as several technicians the doctor had brought along, in taking apart the drone and inspecting its key parts. They found nothing unusual, which Kamui wasn’t too surprised to hear. After all, saying the bot didn’t work at all wasn’t exactly true. In fact, to all external eyes, it would appear to be in mint condition, perfectly able to whiz around doing menial tasks, rattle off weather predictions, and provide nutritional suggestions at mealtimes. To him, however, it had become practically worthless overnight following the loss of its most critical function: to perform his daily cymatic scan. He was certain a problem that specific wasn’t the issue of a dead battery.

“Looks fine to me,” said one of the technicians. “It’s probably just a one-time thing. It should work fine once we reboot it.” 

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” added Masuzaki. “It might have just performed the scan while you were asleep.” 

“This bot scans my Psycho-Pass every morning at 6:43. There’s no way I’d be asleep at that time. Masuzaki-sensei, is there a way I can take a look at its programming?” 

“It’s been a while since I left the Tougane Foundation. I don’t know if I still have access to those blueprints…” 

“Wait, hold on. Just look behind it and give me the model number. I can manage it.” 

* * *

“I’m impressed with the work on that hologram, by the way,” said Masuzaki over his shoulder. “Very realistic. Makes you look normal. Almost like you could go walk in the street, and no one would notice.” 

Kamui didn’t respond. Two hours after he’d hacked into the drone and made the first comprehensive search, he continued to stare, arms wrapped around his knees, at immaculate lines of code that lacked the slightest trace of a bug. He started to wonder if he’d dreamt the malfunction. Code didn’t lie. 

“You’ve really become quite the kid, haven’t you?” 

Kamui shrugged. He knew his ex-doctor was trying to make idle conversation that he didn’t have the resources to invest in, but background noise wasn’t the worst thing to have. 

“You’re cracking robots at the age of – what are you, fifteen? Sixteen? When I operated on you, I didn’t think I’d be saving the next child genius.” 

“Thanks.” 

“It’s about the only thing that makes me feel better about what I did to you.” 

There was a long silence. Kamui felt a bitter tension in his eyes, his thoughts now far from the task at hand. He blinked hard. 

“Come, take a break from that screen. Tell me, Kirito-kun: have you ever thought about what you wanted to be when you grow up?” 

Finally, something he knew for sure about himself. “Well, sensei, that would be the job aptitude test’s decision, not mine. Honestly, they’d probably make me a programmer, but I think I know enough about computers. I’d like to know more about people. If it were up to me…” He allowed himself to smile. “I’d love to be a doctor.”

* * *

As the months went by, his drone remained unable to scan him.

The other professionals he’d contacted to solve his problem all went home without an answer. Trying to fix the machine quickly turned futile, so he gave up.

On one hand, not knowing his mental state agitated him. On the other hand, said agitation did not seem to affect his Psycho-Pass – as far as he could tell, anyway, as his only method was to walk out into the street in self-induced distress and wait for a stress-bot or a law enforcer to apprehend him (they never did). Eventually, Kamui was able to convince himself that his hue had improved so dramatically he no longer needed scans or stress care. And once he came to that conclusion, it began to settle that he’d come upon an accidental blessing.

It started to seem somewhat relieving that he was free from the burdens he heard everyone talking about during his occasional excursions into the outside world, in city parks, sidewalks, at outdoor cafes. Stress care this, isolation facilities that. It appeared to him that a person whose life was not consumed by the Psycho-Pass practically did not exist in this day and age. For whatever reason, however, he had stepped out of that vicious cycle, and could devote more mental energy to his studies that he otherwise would’ve spent worrying. He imagined this was what it would’ve been like to live in the twenty-first century.

So for the next three years, he carried on living as if nothing was wrong. Initial fears that he’d be caught avoiding scans subsided as soon as he learned that nobody cared enough to stop him. Indeed, the very concept of the Psycho-Pass began to lose relevance, and the only thing that prevented him from forgetting about it completely was his schoolwork. True to his promise, he had jumped head-first into the knowledge troves of medical science and, after feeling an unsurprising discomfort with the surgical profession, found his niche in pharmacology. With research on stress drugs like Lacouse dominating the literature, Kamui retained an awareness of Crime Coefficients and hues, but solely in the realm of science – how measurements interacted with different compounds, for example, or how drugs could be combined with therapy to create long-lasting effects in people. What soon became apparent was the woeful inadequacy of existing treatments, and Kamui found himself dreaming of how he could transform the field of modern medicine. As a pioneer, changing lives. Freeing people with the same gift he’d accidentally received…

Ironically, he figured that his actual Psycho-Pass, hidden somewhere in the deep recesses, was probably the clearest during those three years. After all, he hardly had an antisocial inclination in him back then. Stealing, maiming, and torturing weren’t activities that even occurred to him until later. But by then, there wasn’t much else for him to do.

* * *

“What do you mean, I’m not eligible? I was told there would be no difference in the process for homeschooled students, so unless I’ve been lied to –” 

“We’re sorry, uh, sir,” stammered the registrar at the Ministry of Education. “We’re trying to fix the problem. It’s just that we’ve never had this situation happen before, and it has to be an administrative error of some sort, so I have to call some people in to take a look at it…” 

“ _What’s_ an administrative error? Why can’t I take this exam?” 

“Well, there’s no way it could possibly be correct, but… you don’t appear to have a registered profile within the Sibyl System.” 

“What?” 

“Well, sir – ” 

“My name is Kamui.”

“I don’t know that, sir. As far as I know, you don’t have a name. You see, the Sibyl System is required to scan everyone who enrolls in the job aptitude exam, to make sure they’re in a good enough mental standing to join the workforce. It gets your complete profile, Crime Coefficient, hue and all; those who pass take the test, and those who fail get isolated. The problem is, we scanned you and nothing came up. No profile, no Psycho-Pass, nothing. It was as if we were scanning air.” 

In his mind, a thought began to take the slightest of coherent forms, all the little pieces of one big grotesque puzzle beginning to coalesce. 

“Which means that as far as Sibyl is concerned,” she concluded, “you don’t exist.”

* * *

He told her he’d wait as she called others to check the equipment. He’d done it before. He’d wait. 

After about five hours and several whispers and stares (and he could’ve been mistaken, but they almost certainly felt nasty), an official-looking man wearing a suit and holding a state-licensed firearm – a Dominator, he recalled from his studies – approached him. 

“Sir, I’m going to need you to come with me,” he said. 

“Has the problem been fixed?” Kamui asked impatiently.  “Or does it look like it will be in the near future?” 

“You have to understand, sir, that immigration laws have become exceptionally strict, and getting official naturalization under Sibyl is close to impossible unless you have proper documentation from your home country, and even then – ” 

“ _Home country!?_ I’M _JAPANESE_.” Kamui was close to hysterics. “My name is Kamui Kirito. I was born in Yamanashi Prefecture on July 23 rd, 2091. I was in a _plane accident_ in 2099 at Mount Kumataka in which I was the sole survivor! There are _records, medical records!_ Just do a search and you’ll – Jesus, do you _really_ think I’m an _illegal immigrant!?_ ” 

The officer – an Inspector from the MWPSB, from the looks of it – shook his head, unmoved. “We did a thorough search and didn’t find anything that could prove your existence as a Japanese citizen.” 

 _They wiped it out. That was it. The crash. All his friends, dead. They simply wiped it from the records._ His breathing grew jagged as hot tears of anger burned his eyes. 

“Any parents who can prove their citizenship?” asked the Inspector. 

Kamui shook his head. “I’ve lost contact.” 

“Then you’re going to have to come with me.” 

Kamui’s vision was blurred by his tears, but he thought he could hear handcuffs clinking in the Inspector’s right hand. He stood up, stared up at the taller man square in the eyes, and started to back away. 

Step by step, backwards, away. 

It took about three steps for the Inspector to brandish the Dominator. Kamui froze momentarily, fearing for his life in front of the very first weapon being pointed at him. It allowed him to catch, in that split second, the sight of the Inspector’s eyes widening in disbelief, his hands fumbling with the bulky contraption and his fingers fruitlessly pulling at the locked trigger. 

And then he didn’t wait any longer. Kamui made a break for the exit. 

* * *

That night, he staked out at a seedy motel in the Abolitionist Area, riding out the last of the searches for him, if there were any. Somehow, he doubted it.

 _So that’s it,_ he thought as he lay on the springy, stained bed. _For whatever reason, Sibyl has decided to erase me, along with my tragedy. As deemed by the System, I no longer exist as a member of this society. As if having my friends killed and my body mangled weren’t enough, I’ve now been judged unworthy of existence or meaningful contribution. All my talent, heart, dreams of helping others... What use are they if my status in Japan is now no better than an undocumented immigrant?_  

He wondered if this was how latent criminals felt. Unworthy, betrayed, doomed to spend the rest of their lives in shame and degradation, and hopeless in the wake of a suddenly bleak future. 

* * *

He returned home a day later, after the unsurprising lack of pursuit by law enforcement, in order to pack his most valued belongings. He’d made up his mind to abandon his studies, begin a new life and find meaning in it, somewhere, somehow, as a reluctant nonconformist in an oppressively conformist world. He wasn’t sure what meaning he’d find or how to find it, but he knew that to make it happen, there was one thing he absolutely needed – and he had a good idea of how to get it.

He scoured the apartment for something that could be used as a weapon. He didn’t own a firearm, but eventually turned up a pair of scissors and a fruit knife. He decided to take both; after all, you could never be too prepared.


	3. Hades' Helm

It wasn’t medicine he sorely needed; after all, it was no longer of use to him personally. But pharmacies were establishments Kamui knew well. In particular, he knew the names of all of the most lucrative and powerful drugs on the market. He knew which ones the junkies were hooked on, which over-the-counter pills high school students abused like dope fiends. In fact, he probably knew enough to make a decent business of it. Illegally, of course – but then again, when your own existence is illegal, the limits start to blur.

Besides, it would be good practice for the bigger heist.

* * *

The day was clear and balmy, and portended nothing but good happenings as Kamui strolled into the first mental care facility he came across, a modest little place in Shibuya. There was a plaza out front, with a smattering of parasol tables and several groups of people seated there. The facility itself, neatly decorated with colorful furniture and tinted glass, wasn’t too busy, with just a few people waiting on their prescriptions or their appointments with their therapists. _Perfect,_ he thought. _Attention, but not too much. Not a crowd I couldn’t control if things went wrong._

The pharmacy was located towards the back of the facility, and the staff-only entrance was guarded by a lone cymatic scanner. Realizing he needed a valid scan to get in, Kamui sat down casually in the waiting area until he saw an employee heading in that direction, then got up and tailed her even more casually, as if he were a lost patient looking for the restroom. He managed to follow her into the room, where their only other companion was a drone carrying medicine out to the counter. Even then, it took her about two seconds to notice him. 

“Um, excuse me, you’re not allowed in here,” she said, in the kind of voice you used with a disobedient teenager.

“Sorry,” he said, sinking his right hand into his deep jacket pocket. “I was wondering if you carried any of the following drugs: IRIS, Lustra, purified Admin, or one or all six different types of LACOUSE.”

“Get out of here, kid, before I call someone.”

“Do you have them or not?”

“Look, kid, even if we did, those are all psychotropic substances and we’re not allowed to give them out without a prescription. If you’re just trying to get high, it’s not happening. Now leave.” 

Kamui sighed. Of course he wasn’t going to avoid it. If it were that easy, everyone would be dealing drugs. 

He slipped the slender knife slowly out of his jacket pocket, watched the terror settle over her face, and gave her his most disarming smile. 

“Let’s not make this harder than it has to be,” he said pleasantly.

* * *

Ten minutes later, he had a backpack full of psychotropic drugs and a woman he now had to decide if he wanted to keep alive. It would be inconvenient having a witness who could describe his appearance in detail, and he doubted he would have time to program a detailed holo to use for his next stop.

But then again, what could they possibly do to him? Even if she’d reported him, and the police had found him a significant enough threat to actually apprehend, what could they do short of physical force? He wasn’t legally a person, let alone a criminal. That Inspector couldn’t even use his Dominator, and the MWPSB didn’t have real guns. The only real threat the woman posed was the chance that her testimony would make him a widely known fugitive, which meant he would have to remain on the run in case someone managed to design an adequate weapon to off him. Suddenly, being a feared outlaw sounded like a ridiculously glamorous destiny. He’d be the Spike Spiegel of Sibyl-era Japan, the most wanted drug kingpin of the 22nd century. If that wasn’t a meaningful life, well, he might as well stop all of this and just slit his own throat right now.

So he decided to take it a step further. He had to be quick, though, as he was sure the employee’s hue had clouded despite his efforts to keep it down, and what he was about to do would likely trigger an Area Stress Warning. Hoisting the backpack onto his shoulders, he held the knife to the whimpering woman’s throat, grabbed her by her hair and dragged her out into the lobby, where heads turned slowly toward them and began to murmur in uncertainty and fear. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said unto the crowd. “My name is Kamui Kirito, and as you can see, I’m holding this woman hostage. Right now, I want you all to reach into your bags and pockets, take out any wallets, money, or medication you have, and throw them over to me. I can count there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight of you, so I can tell if someone doesn’t pay. If any one of you gets selfish, I’ll slit her throat, and everyone else’s in this room, too. So go on, now, make your choice. You might be strangers, but you’re one group now, and you’ve got an innocent life to judge. Every one of you, you get to decide whether she lives or dies, but you have to do it together. Think of it as a favor from me, because that’s about as much responsibility as you’re ever going to get in the entirety of your sad, painkiller-numbed lifetimes.” 

One by one, wallets, bills and bottles of medication landed at his feet. Once he made sure everyone had paid, he let go of the woman without any showy violent pretense, collected his loot, and headed swiftly for the door. The woman instantly retrieved her cell phone and began dialing for the police.

“Remember my name,” he told the stunned patients as he prepared to leave. 

“What was it again?” asked one middle-aged man. 

Politely, he cleared his throat. “My name is Kamui Kirito. Born in Yamanashi Prefecture on July 23rd, 2091, survivor of a lethal plane accident, and nonexistent in the eyes of Sibyl. Now excuse me, I’ve got a bank to rob.”

* * *

He was met with surprisingly little resistance at the digitalized bank a few blocks away. Although he wished on more than one instance that he had a gun, he learned that most people found the threat of being stabbed in the throat with scissors quite intimidating. Without the protection of the Sibyl System, security was dismal even in the places that needed them the most. And as soon as he gained access to the encrypted online vaults, Kamui was able to pour colossal sums of money into his account in a matter of milliseconds. It dawned on him that the overwhelming fixation of the current societal order was to prevent crime before it happened, and yet in the face of individuals who happened to exist outside of it, the system was almost pathetically flawed. _For a perfectly designed supercomputer free of human faults,_ _the Sibyl System sure has a huge glaring bug to fix,_ he thought wryly. Crime was easy, and easier than ever – you just had to get lucky enough to sneak between the loopholes. He wondered how many people out there were like him, cursed by this blessing, forced to thrive in a life of crime.

Walking back into the common area, he sat down quietly and watched people continue to idly process their transactions. Exactly no one had noticed what he’d just done. Kamui was suddenly consumed by an irrational anger, for himself, for the Sibyl System. He’d just committed two reprehensible crimes, received virtually no opposition from any sort of law enforcement, and had exactly zero public safety officers arrive to apprehend him. _Sibyl System, your job is to protect these people,_ he thought bitterly. _Yet you’re letting me threaten and extort them as a result of your own imperfection. You’re revered as an omnipotent god, yet you betray everyone’s faith by failing to recognize evil right in front of you. Are you really so broken, Sibyl, that you can’t recognize me?_

Before he knew it, he was staring into a cymatic scanner, waving his knife madly at it, staring into his own contorted, hysterical face, into a soul that had just completely cracked. He heard himself screaming, “I’M RIGHT HERE! I’M RIGHT HERE, YOU PIECE OF SHIT SYSTEM! CAN’T YOU SEE ME!? CAN’T YOU SEE I’M A THREAT TO YOUR SOCIETY!? RECOGNIZE ME!!! FUCKING RECOGNIZE ME!!!!!!!”

* * *

In response to a sudden rise in Area Stress at the Sendai Private Bank in Shibuya, Inspectors Suzuki Moe and Domoto Shuichiro of the MWPSB Division 3 arrived at the scene to still-traumatized clients and reports of an escaped criminal who allegedly could not be detected by the cymatic scanners despite clearly being psychotic, according to eyewitnesses.

“You think it might be the same guy Kougami met?” asked Suzuki. “The illegal immigrant kid who didn’t show up on the Dominator?”

“Well, Kougami’s a bit of a nutcase, so who even knows if what he said that day was true,” said Domoto. “Especially if Chief Kasei told him to shut up about it.”

“Yeah. After all, the Dominators are Sibyl’s eyes, and I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t be able to judge anyone, even an illegal. His Dominator was probably just broken.” Suzuki shifted his glasses in thought. “Although I wonder what I’d do, if that happened to me.”

“Hm?”

“You know, if someone’s trying to kill you, and for some reason the Dominator can’t read him. Would you kill him, with like, you know, something else?”

“Like what, a gun?”

“Yeah. Or like, a heavy object. Smash his head in.”

“I dunno, man. If Sibyl can’t judge the guy, who am I to judge if he’s good or bad? I don’t know his Crime Coefficient.”

“Yeah, but still – what if he’s trying to kill you?”

“I dunno. If I kill him without Sibyl telling me it’s right or wrong, it’s gonna weigh on me. I’m gonna start feeling guilty, and that would fuck up my Psycho-Pass.”

“Yeah, you’re right. And then, Jesus. Maybe _we’d_ become viable targets for the Dominators.” Suzuki shivered. “I bet that’s why Kougami’s so goddamn neurotic. He probably thinks about this shit all the time.”

* * *

The Motel Hisaya on the outskirts of the Abolitionist Area became Kamui’s usual haunt. It wasn’t as if he needed to hide from anyone, but its location made it an ideal hub from which to operate his business, which consisted partly of identifying prolific traffickers and customers through extensive research, but mostly of heading into the dumps himself to find people who were buying. It was on one of his excursions, a week or so after the break-ins, that he peered into an alleyway lit luridly by neon signs and noticed someone who looked rather familiar.

The graying man wore a long tan overcoat and was curled up against the dirty wall, arms around his knees, involuntarily twitching ever so often. His eyes were dull and glazed, his jaw hung slightly open and a small amount of saliva seeped from the left corner of his mouth. It wasn’t hard to guess the cause of his stupor: several bottles of empty prescription meds lay littered around him, and it took Kamui a good hard look at his face and half a mind to make the man an offer before he finally recognized him.

“Masuzaki-sensei…?”

The doctor groaned and squinted laboriously, trying to focus the image of the face in front of him. “Kirito-kun…?” he croaked, barely audible.

Kamui nodded, and felt tears stinging his eyes.

“It’s been… so long… How are your studies…going?”

“Never mind my studies,” said Kamui, as a tear fell down his cheek. “Sensei… what on earth happened to you?”

He reached out a hand, and Masuzaki took it. The doctor stumbled as Kamui lifted him up, and tripped on the empty bottles, sending cold glass clinking into the darkness. As he lost his balance, his limp body weight fell onto the young man. Kamui wrapped his arms around Masuzaki as he realized he was the only thing keeping his doctor from hitting the stony pavement.

“I saved you,” Masuzaki whispered.

Kamui nodded.

“But I couldn’t save everyone.”

Masuzaki withdrew from his former patient’s grasp, and stared into the wall behind him, as if he could draw out some reprieve from it. “Us doctors… we perform hundreds of surgeries every week. When someone dies because we weren’t able to save them… it eats at us. Consumes us with guilt and regret. The stress is unbearable. You can’t imagine… being a doctor is no good, Kirito-kun. My Psycho-Pass is so cloudy, you’ll probably get clouded just by standing next to me. That’s why I…” He glanced at a bottle at his feet.

Kamui shook his head. “It doesn’t matter to me anymore.” He picked up the bottle and read the label. “Sensei, this isn’t going to cure you. It’s far too strong for guilt-attributed stress; it’ll only make you dependent.”

“So you took up pharmacology, after all.” Masuzaki smiled wryly. “You’re a bit late with that diagnosis. I’m too far gone.”

“No, you’re not,” insisted Kamui. “I can give you the right meds and the right dosage. I have some drugs on me right now. I can – ”

“If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that drugs do very little to clear the conscience of a doctor who has failed to save lives.”

“But you did save me.” Kamui stepped forward and placed two hands firmly on his doctor’s shoulders. “Think back to who you were, Sensei. Think back to the doctor who saved a child from a plane crash, a child who’s grown up with a brilliant future ahead of him… think of the countless other lives that doctor saved in his long, fruitful career. Think back to him… the doctor you’ve come to forget.”

A sustained silence lulled over them, broken only by the intermittent sound of dripping water. Without warning, Masuzaki began to cry. His hazy eyes seemed to clear as tears flowed over them. His sobs, quiet and ragged, seemed wrought with a lifetime’s worth of remorse. Kamui observed this catharsis, this violent expulsion of toxic emotion, with a quiet absorbency.

When it was over, Masuzaki composed himself. “Go to the Ministry of Economy Patent Office,” he said. “Search for Tougane Misako.”

“Tougane Misako… is she related to the Tougane Foundation?”

Masuzaki nodded. “She was the one who commissioned your surgery. I told you we did what we did to advance transplant technology, but… there was more, and she funded it. Go to the ministry and look into her research. I think you deserve to know the truth.”

* * *

“This trip should only take a few hours,” he told Masuzaki, after equipping him with several carefully measured doses of medicine. “Then I’ll come back and get you out of here. It’s my turn to save your life.” He turned and began walking down the narrow alley that led out into the main road that ran through the district.

“You already have,” Masuzaki called out after him. “Now go and save the world.”

The dark alleyway opened up to a garish deluge of color and light as it converged into the main road, which cut through the mishmash of uneven buildings in the Abolitionist Area like a train track through coarse gravel. Kamui could see the glaring Chinese characters up ahead that marked the end of the district, and continued discreetly on his way, hoodie pulled over his head and hands buried in his jacket pockets.

It was right at the edge of civilized Tokyo that he momentarily felt an uneasy chill run through his body, a strange and alien rush of cold far more visceral and deep-reaching than a gust of wind. It felt like ice water trickling down the sheaths of his nerves and seeping through the enamel of his bones. In the few seconds that the feeling lasted, Kamui looked up and caught a single glimpse of a pair of yellow, snake-like eyes staring into his own. They were set like ambers in a thin face the complexion of porcelain, which was framed delicately by ripples of sleek platinum-silver hair. Kamui wasn’t sure if he imagined the slight pause in the man’s brisk steps, the brief moment of mutual appraisal.

The man passed him by as quickly as he’d arrived. Kamui turned around and watched a figure of dazzling white disappear smoothly into the crowd, like a full moon being enveloped by clouds. Kamui kept on walking, and realized that the instant he looked into those eyes was the coldest he’d ever been.


End file.
